Venustransit 2012
On June 5/6th, 2012, between 10.09 pm and 4.49 am UT a black spot will slowly cross the sun's disc. This transit will be observable from all places on the daylight side of the earth (click here).
This phenomenon is caused by Venus overtaking the earth exactly between sun and earth. Therefore, it is called a transit of Venus.
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| Stacked pictures taken at the Transit 2004. Equatorial view |
Stacked pictures taken at the Transit 2004. Horizontal view |
In history, transits of Venus played a central role in determining the size of the solar system. Nowadays they offer an excellent motivation to spread information about the history of astronomy and its actual development, to magnify the public awareness for astronomical phenomena and to join people all over the world in cooperative projects.
This website will propose some international projects of observing, photographing and measuring the transit in order to repeat the historical determination of the distance from earth to sun (the so-called Astronomical Unit AU) by observing and evaluating the transit of Venus with modern methods.
The project proposed here will be very similar to those we have organized for the transit in 2004.
Editor: Stephan Breil
last update: 31.08.2010